Archive for December 2016

Thor: Banner, I desire to act like a normal human for a time. How should I accomplish this?Bruce: Well, um, normal people don’t have your speech pattern, for one. They, um, have jobs and hobbies…Thor: Hobbies?Bruce: You know, photography, video games, puzzles…Thor: And how does one acquire a ‘job’?Bruce: Most people use the inter… you should probably look in the classifieds in a newspaper. Also, try shaving the beard and cutting your hair- you’re a bit recognizable.Thor: *sees Superman/Clark Kent costume* A disguise? Like that man?Bruce: Sure, yeah, glasses work.-later, above a Chinese restaurant-Thor: Hello? I saw your ad. I’m Kevin.

This scenario, from a friend of Viking Sheep, instantly entered so many people’s headcanon. Why? Because Kevin in Ghostbusters is stupid, sure, but he’s not stupid like a normal person. Kevin’s stupidity is on a kind of epic, otherworldly scale. Normal stupid people drive without using their indicators properly, say “muriel” when they mean “mural” and vote for Brexit. Kevin manages to mess up things like answering the phone and wearing glasses. There’s a surreal element to his stupidity, like it’s bending the normal rules of reality.

There is a good, non-Norse-god-related reason for this, though. In the scene where Kevin meets the Ghostbusters, Chris Hemsworth was improvising a lot of his lines. The bizarre stuff came from a “crazy run of improv” that took the other actors by surprise. They struggled to get through the scene because they were laughing so much, and it didn’t help matters when Kate McKinnon farted. Learning all this just makes me want to see the film again.

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